Moon of the Crusted Snow

Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018) by Wasauksing First Nation author and radio host Waubgeshig Rice is an apocalyptic/postapocalyptic novel with many elements of horror. What sets it apart from other novels in the genre is its Indigenous lens. Set on a fictional First Nation reservation, Rice’s novel examines how the traumas of the colonial past affect reservation society. Rice is the author of the novel Legacy and the short story collection Midnight Sweat Lodge. He received the 2014 Anishinabek Nation’s Debwewin Citation for excellence in First Nation Storytelling. This guide references the ECW Press paperback edition.

Content Warning: The novel depicts substance abuse, murder, and suicide.

Plot Summary

Evan Whitesky, a member of an Anishinaabe reservation in northern Canada, shoots a moose for his family’s stockpile of food for the upcoming winter. He returns home with his kill, where his partner, Nicole McCloud, tells him that the television has been out all day. The next morning, Evan greets his children, Maiingan and Nangohns. Evan and Nicole discover that cell phone service is down as well. Evan’s best friend, Isaiah North, comes to help him butcher the moose. The next day, Evan visits his parents, Dan and Patricia. Dan describes a recent dream in which Evan and other community members, who appeared to be starving, set a massive fire in the countryside to draw out moose to hunt. The dream and Patricia’s revelation that the internet has been down gradually increase Evan’s anxiety about the situation.

Power in the village goes out. Terry Meegis, the band’s chief, calls Evan and Isaiah to work early on a Saturday morning to distribute flyers calling for emergency power rationing and for a community meeting on Monday. The first snows of the season arrive, and Evan, Isaiah, and their friend and coworker, Tyler, are kept busy maintaining the roads. On Monday, the meeting is ill-attended. Terry does a bad job of reassuring the crowd, and Evan recognizes that the chief is losing control of the situation. The town’s only supermarket is swarmed after the meeting. Evan goes with the intention of buying some basic supplies to add to his family’s already well-stocked larder, but finds the shelves nearly empty. 

As the cold weather intensifies and the outages continue, the council does its best to reassure the community and reinforce the emergency energy measures. Nicole has a disquieting dream in which her adult children, speaking the old language, help her cross a field of crusted snow that threatens to swallow her. As the snowfall continues to intensify, Evan, Isaiah, and Tyler plow the roads. One day, two snowmobiles approach from the distance. It is Nick Jones and Kevin Birch, two young men who went off to college in Gibson, a city to the south. The two young men are distressed; they relay the disturbing news that the southern cities are experiencing the same infrastructure collapse as the reservation. At a band council meeting, they tell their story in full, describing the way Canadian society began to collapse. They were barely able to escape, needing to resort to violence to keep from being attacked. Nick and Kevin’s news sets the leadership on edge. Realizing that shipments of food and fuel are unlikely, the leaders plan to ration the town’s emergency food cache. Terry can barely hold himself together; he begins to cede control to his cousin, Walter Meegis.

Justin Scott, a white man and self-professed survivalist, arrives soon after; Evan immediately distrusts him. Scott begins insinuating himself into the community after Terry and Walter Meegis agree to let him stay. He disrupts an already tense town meeting in which Terry struggled to explain their precarious situation to the community. Shortly after Scott’s arrival, Evan has a nightmare in which he struggles to cross rapidly deepening snow toward a building. Once inside, he finds row after row of bodies wrapped in blankets.

Scott, meanwhile, proves his worth as an outdoorsman by killing a moose on his first hunt. However, just as Evan begins to think Scott might prove valuable to the community, they are set at odds. Evan visits his brother Cam’s apartment, which he shares with his partner, Sydney, and their son. He finds them drunk, partying with Sydney’s cousins, Jenna and Tara, and Scott. The sight of Jenna on Scott’s lap almost goads Evan into fighting Scott.

The next day, Jenna and Tara are found dead, apparently having frozen to death after walking home. Evan knows Scott might be involved, and he tells Terry and Walter; however, the arrival of several outsiders on snowmobiles puts the topic on hold. The leader of the group, Mark Phillips, begs for shelter. When he becomes frustrated and lunges toward Terry, Scott shoots him dead. Scott instructs them to leave his body at the edge of the village as a warning to other refugees. Evan knows Terry has just handed power to Scott.

Winter proper arrives. Evan and the others have ceased plowing the roads, as diesel reserves are now depleted, save for one last emergency burst. They go house to house to check on elders. Evan visits an elder named Aileen to make sure her home is warm. Aileen reminds him that the Anishinaabe have experienced the “apocalypse” before: when they were driven from their ancestral lands, and when their children were taken by the government and their culture forcibly erased.

After visiting Aileen, Evan reflects on the season: By now, it must be Onaabenii Giizis, the Moon of the Crusted Snow, the peak of winter. He meets Isaiah and Evan to take the body of an elder who has died to the makeshift morgue. The ground is too frozen to give them a proper burial until the spring thaw.

Since autumn, leadership in the community has fractured. Many still rely on Terry and the council for guidance and canned food, though some have migrated to the strongman promises of Justin Scott. Nicole finds out from Meghan Connor, a refugee from the group whose leader Scott murdered, that the newcomers are under Scott’s sway.

Evan, meanwhile, has been building a bush shelter—a tipi—in case the situation in the village devolves. While visiting his shelter, Evan falls asleep and has a nightmare in which he discovers that the bodies in the morgue are missing. The menacing figure of a wendigo—a mythological evil spirit—bearing Justin Scott’s face wakes him up.

Aileen dies. When he and Tyler take her body to the morgue, they discover that a corpse is missing. Evan pieces together his dream and cryptic remarks made by Scott: He suspects Scott of looting a body to cannibalize. Evan, Isaiah, and Tyler go to the duplexes to confront Scott. They find him and the other newcomers standing around a boiling pot. They greet each other but quickly dispense with the pleasantries. Cam emerges from the duplex, covered in blood. When Evan asks what is in the pot, Scott shoots him three times. Before he can aim at Tyler and Isaiah, Meghan Connor shoots Scott in the head with a hunting rifle. Isaiah and Tyler deposit Scott’s body at the edge of town.

Two years later, in the springtime, Nicole packs the last of the family’s things. The band is relocating to deep in Anishinaabe territory. She asks Maiingan and Nangohns if they are ready to go see their dad—Evan has gone ahead of them. They leave, along with Nicole’s and Evan’s parents, without looking back.